- Australians justify their investment in IRRI. Now that’s what I call impact!
- Peruvian cuisine takes over the world. But, as Eve points out elsewhere, “We have a thousand kinds of potatoes in Peru, thousands” is not hyperbole.
- Jess scoops the world with a nutrition strategy for the masses.
- Indians need sorghum and millets to keep healthy.
- Ethnobiology: The Book.
- Talking about street food. Hold the mayo.
- Not all pigs are cloven-hoofed. A tetrapod zoologist explains syndactyly.
- Polyculture; is it all Pollyanna? Science will answer.
- A flavour map of British cheeses. You know you need it.
- Foraging for pawpaws. Not those pawpaws.
- Bird areas apps. CWRs next?
Nibbles: Maize, David Douglas, Globesity, Iron-rice rice, Miracle berry, Trout vs cows
- Farmer Brian Schaumburg has planted corn for five straight years in some of the thousands of acres he tends in central Illinois. Good thinking; it’s non-native, and it’s a monoculture.
- Douglas of the Douglas Fir remembered.
- Tom tackles “globesity“.
- Enriching rice with iron and zinc using rice’s own genes. Because they can.
- How Richadella dulcifica works its miracles.
- In the contest between fish and bovine, the outcome is not always certain.
Nibbles: Elm disease, Kew genebank, Maize domestication, Wildlife vs livestock, Medieval figs, Alternative food security, Spineless lulo, Mangos for Haiti, Aubergine breeding, Urban ag in Japan, West African research
- “Beginning in the late 1990s, Kock travelled throughout Ontario collecting twigs of seemingly healthy mature elms, in what amounted to an elm dating service.”
- “…a curated inventory of miscellaneous interestingness” lands on the Millennium Seed Bank. Hilarity ensues.
- What do hopscotch, architecture and maize have in common?
- Zebras good for cattle.
- The fig deconstructed.
- “Improve yields through crop diversity…” ??? Who are these people?
- Crops for the Future bemoans the loss of “a spineless variety of Solanum quitoense.” Someone, somewhere must still have it, surely.
- Mangos: Haiti’s new best friend?
- Home-bred eggplants. Or aubergines.
- “Urban agriculture in Japan, cultivating sustainability and well being.” Again? Still?
- West Africa to get bunch of specialist biotechnology centres for crop improvement. No word on where the existing national genebanks fit in. Nor, ahem, what role IITA, ICRISAT and the other CGIAR Centres are going to play in all this.
Nibbles: Collecting, US heirlooms, Sequencing NUS, Nutrition strategies, Potatoes and climate change, Italian genetics
- NSF re-invents the genebank wheel. No, that’s unfair, they’ve given much-needed money to evolutionary scientists to go out and collect seeds of 34 species in a really pernickety way.
- Heirlooms being lost (maybe) and being re-found in the US. Thanks to Eve (on FB) for both.
- A Cape tomato by any other name…
- Gates Foundation has a new nutrition strategy. Gotta admire the chutzpah of summarizing the thing in basically half a side of A4. Compare and contrast, both as to content and presentation, with the CGIAR. Unfair again, I know, but that’s the kind of mood I’m in. Jess unavailable for comment.
- Very complicated, very pretty maps about potatoes and climate change.
- “I failed to notice substantial contributions to discussions or presentations from breeders or seed organizations, the end users of so much of the research discussed.” Pat Heslop Harrison calls ’em like he seems ’em.
Nibbles: Baobab, Plant cuttings & carnivalia, Apples, Fodder, Range management, PNG blog, Cattle breeding, Food security questions
- Baobab: your favourite nutritious neglected species for the next 10 seconds.
- Nigel Chaffey’s fresh selection of Plant Cuttings is up.
- Which reminds me; don’t forget to submit to Berry go Round.
- Searching for lost apples in the Scottish Highlands. A job for mountain rescue?
- Why feed my cow? A more interesting question than it seems.
- Rangeland scientists take photos of their study sites shock. Applications for crop wild relatives? Bound to be.
- Glad to give my friend Seniorl Anzu at NARI in PNG a plug for his new(ish) blog, PNG-Agrinews.
- Wageningen solves that cow burping problem.
- Cambridge says I see your cow burps and raise you food security.